Alcoholics Anonymous in a New City.
AA has many different flavors. There are dozens of different kinds of meetings and lots of different procedures and idiosyncracies. There’s no “right way” to run a meeting. There’s a few “wrong” ways, but those mostly involve things easy to correct and in fact generally self-correcting, like allowing too much cross-talk and running too far over time. But I’ve seen these problems addressed with group conscience and solved. I’ve seen meetings where a tyrant runs it according to his/her whim and I don’t go back. I’ve seen bruised feelings cause people to leave meetings where no reason for them to do so exists. We’re just like other people, except we’re alcoholics.
I spent a few days in ECC last week, getting my apartment found and leased. I found a place that I think I will like. It’s not perfect. But it’s better than just good. I’m excited to go live there. Wednesday night, I went to a meeting near my hotel, right downtown. It turned out to be a gay newcomers meeting. And, of course, just like I knew it would be, it was good old AA. There were things that were different. They asked if anyone had any non-AA related announcements. Um.. yuck. I go to an AA meeting for AA. But that’s not “wrong”. It’s just different. They also asked everyone to go around the room and give the length of their sobriety. Just odd to me. Not wrong.
Despite not being gay, and not being a newcomer, I was quite welcome. People were enthusiastic about me coming to ECC and offered to help me get connected at meetings and involved with the AA community. The truth is, I’m not super involved with the AA community, other than as a member. I have no interest in organizing potlucks and dances and conferences. That’s not my interest and not my talent. I just want to stay sober, make friends, and connect with my people. That makes things feel like home faster. And ECC has an enormous downtown population. There are hundreds of meetings within walking distance of my new home. I’ll find a few that feel right.
I also have a friend here who has a friend there who has been in the program a long time. A former cop, now a union representative for ECC government workers. My local friend gave me his number, and I called him out of the blue last night. I left a message, and he called me back within 20 minutes. We talked for about 10 minutes, and he was immediately friendly, helpful, and warm. He told me to call him day or night, and told me that when I move to ECC he’ll take me to a ballgame and show me around the AA circuit.
That’s how we do things. I didn’t feel at all weird about calling up a stranger and asking him to help me find meetings. He didn’t feel at all weird about getting a call from a stranger and being asked for help. Just like I wouldn’t if the circumstances were reversed. And they have been. We are, as a rule, eager to help strangers. Because once, I was a stranger to everyone in AA. And everyone helped me.
As I became more stable, more grounded, more sober, I became capable of returning the favor. Of carrying the message. There are people out there now who are sober who were not sober when I came in to the program, and who I have helped some. I am, of course, never responsible for another person’s sobriety. But I know I can, and I know I have, helped. And that’s powerful to me. Lives reclaimed. Lives restored. Families rejoined and careers rescued. AA leads people to living well.
It can be a difficult road. The program of recovery in action is simple, but it is not always easy. And I have never claimed it is the only way. But I have never seen anything I would rather attempt as a path to sobriety and better living. I have seen some other programs, and I have found them lacking in my limited (extremely limited) engagement with them. But I may not have given them a fair look. After all, I’m a scientist, a mathematician, an engineer (yes, sort of all of those things), and I have no need to re-invent wheels. I’m better at building off of others’ work than I am at inventing new ways to do things that already work well.
So I am a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Because it works for me. As it works for millions of others. As it has worked for every single person I have ever seen who actually worked the program, did the steps. I have never seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed the path. This community of seemingly hopeless alcoholics, among whom I numbered then, and among whom I number now, has found a way to collectively emerge from a ruthless darkness, and into a scintillating new light.
It is a light that is all around all of us. One perhaps that normal people cannot see, because they can not know the dark space that counters it. Can we know paradise if we do not also know oblivion?
Apartment Achieved.
I spent two and a half days in ECC, looking for an apartment and doing the administrative things I need to do to be brought on board at PECMC. I was fingerprinted, etc. My background check requests were sent to the various state and federal agencies that they need to be sent to. And then I just walked and walked and walked and walked around ECC looking for a place to live.
In the end, I chose a place right in the middle of downtown, on the eleventh floor of a building about 1.3 miles from work. I’ll be selling my car rather than pay som $300/mo to park it, just to have it. I’ll be in such a different world there. All the restaurants and shops are walking distance from where I’ll be living. Or at least, enough of them that I’ll not want for things to do. There are museums and other things to do close by as well. And I’m going to embrace city living.
I’ve never lived inside a real city before. I’ve never lived in a big apartment building that wasn’t a dorm. But my new place is gorgeous. My bills will be substantially smaller than they are where I am now, because I’ll have a much smaller space to heat and cool. My apartment is just about 815 sqft. It’s divided into a small hallway, a bedroom (no windows), a bathroom, and a greatroom. The greatroom has a kitchenette in the corner, but as you can see, it has all the important attributes.
But the real selling point is the view. It’s got stellar floor-to-ceiling windows, including a corner. It’s going to make owning a parrot a little dicey, and it’s going to be a bit troublesome to find places for all my art. But my excellent @artologica piece will be just next to the fridge. Just like home.
And I only have to live here a year. If I hate it, I can move. In fact, even if I love it, I’ll probably move. Because I want to own rather than rent in the long run, and this place isn’t for sale. But I think I can be quite happy here for the time being. With no car and a wonderful new job.
The Adventure Begins!
Today is my last day of work for a week. I’m going to be burning through a lot of my accumulated vacation this month as I prepare to move to ECC. I’m taking all of next week off to go out there and take care of various things I need to do to be employed by PECMC. Fingerprints, paperwork, housing. I’m looking at a couple of lofts and a couple of apartments within walking distance (3 miles) of PECMC. There’s a loft that I really like the look of online, but it’s expensive. In fact, unless I want to live in a shoebox, everything is expensive.
But I’m going to accept that. I’m moving to a large city on the East Coast of the United States. There’s essentially no such thing as cheap. And I do not, at least, need to find a place in Manhattan, where rents can be up to $5/sqft for decent places to live. ECC is cheaper, and I think I’ll be able to get a good place for about $2/sqft. But that’s still way in excess of St. Louis, where good housing can be got for under a dollar per square foot per month. So it’s a little sticker shocky. In essence, my entire raise will be eaten up by my rent.
And the benefits, at least the financial ones, are not as good as where I am now either. And the taxes are higher out there. So all in all, my standard of living as I move out to ECC is going to drop. I’m going to end up with roughly the same take-home income in a more expensive city, in a smaller home, and have to save more for my retirement than I did in my previous position. These things make me concerned, some. I can obsess about planning these things.
But. I need to remember that all I can do is what I need to do today to prepare for tomorrow. I can’t save half a million dollars today. I might not be able to save that much in my whole life. What I can do today is put away a sensible amount of my take-home income, blah blah blah. And that won’t change when I’m in ECC. I will still be able to do, each day, what I can do each day. And I will be in a good position to do that.
Each time I face a new challenge, I feel like I forget how much the last one terrified me. I need to remember that this upcoming challenge, while daunting, is exactly what I have spent my entire adult life training to do. I need to remember that this, in and of itself, is a privilege. I have studied and published and worked to make improvements in health care delivery systems using computer simulation and other operations research techniques. Now, I have been hired to do exactly that in a wonderful place.
So it’s exciting. Are there drawbacks? Sure. But every situation has drawbacks. I am going to be in the best possible situation I could ever have reasonably requested. And I don’t even have to settle for my potential alternative job – a tenure track professorship.
Sideways from Time.
I always end up absolutely baffled as to the day of the week when Christmas and New Year’s Day fall on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Today is Wednesday, but feels a little bit like a Monday and a little bit like a Friday after two oddly interrupted weeks. So I have no real idea what day of the week it is, nor any idea about how to get back on track considering all my upcoming life-changes. I’m off work entirely next week. I’ll be driving out to ECC and hopefully seeing a place or two that I can imagine living in. The news that I’ll have a renter is very welcome, because it means I can look for a slightly nicer place. ECC, like all east coast cities, is not a cheap place to live.
It’s somewhat disconcerting seeing how expensive everything is there, because I’m coming from a very cushy place. I have a good job in one of the least expensive cities in America. My standard of living here for the past three years has been very high. It will drop a touch when I go out to ECC. But that’s not a bad thing. Right now, I’m alone in a 1900 sqft house. There are whole rooms I essentially never go into. I could lop 800 square feet off and not miss them, as long as I still had a decent kitchen and bathroom.
So everything is in flux. In some ways I feel too old to be doing all this. I’m almost 40. When my mother was my age, she’d been settled as a practicing psychologist for some time. So many of my friends have lives and families. I’m always trailing, it feels like. A year behind, a phase of life removed. My sisters are capable and married to productive men and raising healthy, well-adjusted children. I’m alone. Starting a new job in a new city.
I made choices in life, like we all do. I studied longer than a lot of people. Longer even that most people who get doctorates. It took me longer because I drank so much. Another choice I made. My drinking prevented me from making good romantic choices. So I made bad ones. As a result, I’m divorced. Now, I feel a bit like I ought to be ten years younger than I am. Just finishing school and a starter job, ready to head out on my own.
Of course, my starter job was as a Principal Investigator. I’ve taken such a strange path. And my path has led to many wonderful things too. I’ve traveled the world in ways that very few people have been able to do. My career is relatively lucrative, so I can afford to live in ECC comfortably. I’m excited for a new challenge. I’m nervous. But I’ll make it. Because I always have.
Now, though, I’ve learned how to move forward and be happy at the same time. Which is a marvellous new skill for someone who used to slam his head against every available wall. And I have AA to thank for that. For teaching me the right way to look at time. It doesn’t matter if it’s Tuesday or Friday. It matters that it’s now. That today, I do what I can today. Attend to my responsibilities. Make what arrangements I can for the future. Accept my past. Be grateful for the endless now in which I live.
An Accounting of Things.
One of the things we do in AA is take regular inventory. Well, it’s time to take inventory for the new year with a quick accounting of the last one. Living in the past is not useful, but taking inventory and assessing where we stand in order to move forward through the present-tense permanence of our lives is productive. And 2012 was a transformative year for me.
On this day a year ago, I resolved to walk or run 732 miles over the year. Averaging 2 miles a day. A modest goal, but one which I felt would maintain my physical condition (I did just under 600 the previous year). I’ve lost about 40-45 lbs from my peak, but non over the last year. I still eat too much. But I’m hovering at about 187 lbs, and I’m reasonably fit. At 5’10”, I could easily lose another 20 lbs and not be underweight, but I’m essentially pleased with where I am. And I made my goal. I was way ahead of pace most of the year, but then really slacked off in October and November. I ended with 736. I also started working out with a trainer, which I really like but is very expensive. I am, at the beginning of 2013, in the best shape of my adult life.
My work was interesting. I published a paper early in the year (it came out in March), and that was the only paper I got out this year. But I finished my grant, and wrote two papers which are now under review. One at a really good journal. We’ll see what happens. If they want major new experiments, I won’t be able to respond to review, because I won’t have access to the software I need to do them. But hopefully they’ll have minor statistical concerns, etc. Then I’ll be able to handle them. It would be very, very nice to have a few publications from my grant. Really, it would. I do have a poster accepted to an upcoming conference. And I wrote an R01eq, which will be scored in March. And if it’s funded, I’ll be giving it back.
And of course, when my funding ran out (well, it hasn’t quite yet, but it will), I went on a job hunt. I got interviews for two professorship positions. One of those was non-tenure-track but has been withdrawn and is being reissued as a tenure-track position. I have been asked to reapply. The other I haven’t heard back after my phone interview. I think I screwed up the teaching aspect of that interview, by expressing a strong preference for classrooms over online learning. But we’ll see. You never know. I’m hopeful that I’ll be asked to have an on-campus interview.
But I’m only hopeful to be asked. I’d turn such an interview down, of course. Because, as everyone knows, I’ve accepted a position as a healthcare engineer at Prestigious East Coast Medical Center, in East Coast City. I’m planning a move, and looking forward to discovering a vibrant new city. I’m thrilled to be looking forward to a new challenge, but I’m terrified and excited and confused and overwhelmed. I’ve lived in St. Louis for 20 years. Seattle for 18 years before that. Now I’m going to a new place. I’m hesitant but undaunted.
I traveled to New Zealand and Italy and Vatican City. My distance walking and running does not include many miles walked and hiked in those places. I probably put in 30 or 40 more miles that are not counted in the 736 mile total. I have an appointment this month to have the names of those countries added to my passport-tattoo on my arm. I have now traveled to 40 countries in my life. The three I added this year were more than lovely.
All in all, a very good year. I did a guest blog stint at Scientopia. I took a class in epidemiology at the University of Michigan. I learned so much. And the best part: I did not drink any alcohol, or smoke any cigarettes.
Auspicious Morning.
I hope all y’all can handle a bunch of moving posts, because that’s going to be what’s on my mind for the next few months. But I will definitely by writing about how these things are influenced by, and influence, my sobriety. In fact, I had a wonderful conversation with my friend Pam before my Sunday meeting in which she described her experience of changing cities in sobriety, getting a new sponsor, finding new meetings, etc.. I’ll cover all of that in great detail, I’m sure.
For now, the biggest thing that’s been weighing on my mind about moving has been figuring out what to do with my house. I own my home in St. Louis. It’s a nice house and in pretty good condition, all things considered. It’s about 90 years old, so it has a few issues, but by and large it’s a very good piece of real estate. I’ve been struggling with what to do about it. Sell it? Rent it out? I bought at the end of 2004, so before the bubble burst, but also before it had inflated to obscene proportions. If I sold the house today, I’d probably get back what I paid for it, but not the $40K I put into a new kitchen and new bathroom. But the idea of selling it is kind of breaking my heart. It’s been my home. And it’s a good investment to hold houses long-term.
However, I have had a hugely wonderful thing happen this morning. My office budget manager has had her landlord sell her house out from under her. She’s looking for a new place and wants one exactly like my house. She’s friendly, good with money (at least, good with the office’s money), has a good secure job, and wants a long-term place. She wants to rent from someone she knows. I told her I’d rent it to her at below-market rates for someone like her, just to have it occupied and not have to sell. We have a handshake agreement. She’s going to come look at the place and probably move in shortly after I move out. I couldn’t be happier about it.
So, everything appears to be going quite and very well for me at the moment. The incoming rent on my house will pay for the outgoing rent on a place in ECC (more or less), and I’ll be in good shape all the way round. It’s exciting to have thing settling into place. In the big tetris game of my life at the moment, this is like slotting one of those backwards-S shaped pieces exactly into a spot that makes a line vanish and doesn’t leave a gap. And that’s a pretty good move.
Confronting Fear.
Fear is essentially my biggest challenge in sobriety. I am afraid of so many things. Air travel. Wolves. Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. And of my past thwarting my ability to contribute and be happy in the future. I’ve written a great deal about my fears over my DUI preventing me from working in Canada, and other such things. Today, I have found a new thing to worry about.
PECMC is a medical center that sees a lot of children. So naturally, there is a Child Abuse Background Check, similar to that which a person would go through to be a teacher or daycare worker or adoptive parent. Obviously, I have no history or record of any wrongdoing with children of any kind. I like kids (I don’t think I want any of my own, but I tend to like other people’s kids), and kids like me for the most part. My job at PECMC will not, of course, be related to patient care. I’ll have no meaningful interaction with patients of any kind.
However, that doesn’t mean I can’t find something to panic about. The forms ask me to list everyone I’ve ever lived with. That, of course, includes my ex-wife and ex-stepson. While I don’t believe she would invent lies from whole cloth against me, I would not be particularly surprised if she spoke negatively of me with regard to children because of how I drank. And frankly, she wouldn’t be wrong in that regard. It’s totally inappropriate to drink as much as I did when kids are around.
But we divorced, and she was very angry towards me. Then, about 10 months ago she contacted me asking me for about $23,000, to help my ex-stepson, and I refused, saying that I felt I could not be involved in her life, though I would be there for my ex-stepson if he contacted me personally. Which he hasn’t in the entire intervening time. I’ve had no further contact with either of them except for sending him unacknowledged birthday and Christmas presents, delivered to his grandparent’s home.
I’m reasonably certain that nothing could come of this. I don’t know for a fact that she’s going to be contacted. I don’t know that she’d act spitefully if she were. To be fair, she had opportunities to make our divorce less pleasant than it already was, and she did not take them. I don’t think she would try to derail me now out of mere bad will. But it also would not surprise me. So I contacted our former marriage counselor. I know she couldn’t reveal anything my ex did say, but perhaps she could attest that while she was our marriage counselor, no abuse was ever alleged. Certainly, none occurred, none was in our divorce agreement, and none was ever alleged in the criminal or civil justice system.
And if I end up having to answer for being a drunk, I can do that. Because I was a drunk. And I am not now.
This is how I confront my fear. I write my fears down. I share them, to puncture their inflated power. I assess the situation as honestly and effectively as I can. I seek counsel from others in the program. I recognize my part in the fear. I accept what I’ve done wrong, and what I haven’t, and I prepare to give my account, without deflecting any blame that I warrant. And then I move forward, and accept the consequences of my past for what they are. More, I cannot do.
This is what my sobriety looks like today. Taking forward steps through fear. Confronting my past. Laying out my self honestly. Whatever happens, I can face it. I’m sober. That’s what matters. And wherever my ex-wife and ex-stepson are, I hope they’re well, and prospering. I have no stomach to resent them.
In Which I Make an Ass of Myself.
Yesterday’s meeting was powerful. The man who spoke had, in a fit of alcoholic rage, tried to kill his whole family and himself by swerving their car off a bridge. I’ve heard a lot of stories like that in the rooms. I’ve made friends with thieves and murderers. The man who did that is now about two years sober, and reunited with the family he tried to kill. When we invest in our own recovery, when we surrender to our disease and emerge into sobriety, incredible healing is possible for us, and for those around us.
I, however, made an ass of myself at the meeting. Someone who works with me goes to that same meeting, and when I described my new position, I said that I would be moving from “a mediocre hospital to one of the finest institutions in the world.” She was angry at me. She had every right to be. She’s a good, hard-working nurse and administrator who has made important contributions to our patient’s lives. But she took the time to teach me a lesson too. “You don’t want to be starting a new job and slamming your old one. That won’t reflect well on you.”
That’s what long-term sobriety looks like. I made an ass of myself, and she admonished me while offering me free, sincere, and important advice about how to be a better person. I apologized immediately. But I need to make amends, and thank her. She has been very valuable to me in sobriety, having a person right there at work who is well beyond me in the program, wise and steady. It was wrong of me to insult her work, especially because she’s right.
I owe a great deal to my current work-place. I was unemployed and they hired me, converted me to a PI after 18 months, and set me on a path to where I am a productive member of society. I need to honor that, not criticize it because they’re less than perfect. I owe them more than that.
A Day’s Reflection.
I’m still dazed. I feel a bit like I took a painless blow to the head from a prizefighter. I’m dizzy and sideways and befuddled. I have been offered my dream job at one of the world’s finest hospitals. I will be transitioning from a poor-to-mediocre tertiary facility to a glittering, futuristic outpost on the blade’s edge of medicine and health care. I will be nicely compensated. I will have publishing privileges. I negotiated a $2,000/yr professional development budget so that I can attend a conference to keep up with my field, or publish in an open access journal. I think one or two papers a year is a reasonable expectation. That is not how I’ll be evaluated.
I’m nervous about moving. I’m nervous about a new job. I’m scared I won’t be good enough or smart enough and savvy enough. I’m going to a place where people care about their work, and what they do. I’m coming from a place where, except for the PIs and biostatisticians, no one gives a rat’s ass about the quality of their work it seems. That attitude is infections, virulent. I haven’t been at my best the past six months there. Not knowing that there was no administrative support for my position.
I am going to be doing what I studied to do. One of those jobs that Nature arrogantly considers “alternative”. I will be developing my own ideas and methods to improve patient experience and optimize delivery of health care. I will be solving difficult problems. I will be making a difference in the health care system. With the backing of a renowned institution. I’m nervous and afraid and full of wonderment about how to proceed. And I’m going to figure it all out.
Because I am a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And this is what we do. We have big, real world lives that make a difference. Free from our addictions and able to face the world. I can’t begin to tell you, you who don’t know the horrifying claustrophobia of the bottle, how amazing that is.
Joyous Upheaval.
At 2 pm on the darkest day of the year I was offered, and accepted, a position as a health care engineer at a Prestigious East Coast Medical Center. More news as events warrant. I am grateful. I am grateful. I am grateful.
Infactorium 